Andy Lynes

A bit of both! Congratulations on your success and good luck with the stage.

Here's a thread we made earlier (it wanders around a bit but it might help) : click this.

Welome Ginger Chef. Did you get this stage via winning the Roux scholarship by any chance? (You don't have to answer that if you don't want to).

And some more : "I love the texture of deep fried potato slices” he enunciated crisply. “Whisk those eggs would you?” he requested airily. “Squeeze my lemon, until the juice runs down my leg”, demanded Robert Plant tartly. “Don’t be a gooseberry” he implored sourly. “You couldn’t chop an onion if your life depended on it” he remarked cuttingly. “I’m going to remove the outer layer of the skin of that orange!” he announced zestfully.

I recieved a reply from Chef Demetre which basically said that I had got everything spot on and that the wine I drank was Marques de Griñón, Dominio de Valdepusa, 1996. So there you go.

When I saw the picture of the dining roomin the Standard I thought something wasn't quite right with it, but of course you are totally correct, very 1980's. Were there any Athena posters on the wall? A drawing of a red Ferrari would finish it off quite nicely I think.

This is a UK restaurant I take it?

I can tell.

I agree with Basildog. Can't we trash the reputation of a restaurant without getting all heated about it?

Regarding the pricing, it would appear that dinner is £39.50 a head. The telegraph review says that dinner for 2 is £79.00 before wine and service and the Evening Standard says around £130.00 all in for 2. Very positive review from Fay Maschler, but she did note the amount of jelly used throughout the meal. She also mentioned the "waves of extras" sent out from the kitchen. It will interesting to find out if everyone gets those, or just famous critics.

I know this. I'll give someone else a chance this time though.

I've e mailed Anthony Demetre to see if he can verify and expand on the presumptions I made in my report about his cooking techniques, so I'll report back on any response I recieve. Maybe he might even join us on this thread at some point, who knows.

Slow roasted tomatos with garlic, olive oil and oregano on griddled cheese bread Poached baby leeks, jersey royal potato and romaine lettuce with sauce gribiche. The sauce split on me and I couldn't repair it, but it tasted great never the less.

Ian McAndrew includes a recipe for Sauce Jacqueline in his book "Feast of Fish", which he states is loosely based on Louis Outhier's sauce of the same name. I can't reprint the recipe here but it includes red pepper, carrot, onion, garlic, celery, fennel, butter, paprika, sugar, white wine and fish stock.

Here's a report destined for UKGourmet, hence its slightly formal nature : It would seem that Anthony Demetre of Putney Bridge restaurant in south London is a chef of the old school: a craftsman content to remain in his kitchen and ply his trade. He has no media profile to speak of, and unless you are a regular reader of industry magazine Caterer and Hotelkeeper (in whose pages he appears from time to time) you will probably not even know what he looks like. By shunning the spotlight, Demetre arguably runs the risk of being overlooked by the restaurant going population in favour of chefs more eager to pursue celebrity. If my recent dinner is anything to go by however, this would be a big mistake. Putney Bridge offers a very fine and rewarding dining experience to those who care to seek it out. The restaurant is housed on the first floor of an impressive purpose built modernistic lozenge on the banks of the Thames. The dining room’s rectangle is divided in two along its length. To the rear on the road side is a raised platform of seating at smallish square tables. This overlooks the floor level area of generously proportioned and well-spaced round tables set near to the restaurant's floor to ceiling plate- glassed frontage which affords a calming view of the river to all. As a lone diner I was surprised, but nonetheless very pleased, to be allocated a window table for four all to myself. As I took my seat, I did briefly wonder if my solitary status had caused the front of house staff to mistake me for a man from Michelin, but I rejected this idea as being overly cynical. The sun was setting on some stray waterway traffic as I sipped a beer, tucked into a fine and generous selection of gougeres, cheese straws, mackerel “puffs” and chicken liver parfait toasts and considered my menu options for the evening. The 6-course degustation with its asparagus, foie gras, scallops, lobster or venison, cheese and assiete of desserts all for a relatively paltry sum (by London standards at least) of £49.00 was enormously tempting. With a mind to my waistline and budget however I reluctantly decided that perhaps the a la carte might be the expedient choice. Which is not to say it was in any way second best: dishes such as “fresh Dorset crab, cucumber cream, young leaves and fennel salad” (£14.50) or “roast veal sweetbreads, potato gnocchi, young carrots with truffle honey, casserole of morels” (£22.50) amongst others ensured it a place in the capital's premier league of modern haute cuisine. I ordered “young squid, farcie of beef daube, brandade de morue, parsley cromesquis” to start. This appeared helpfully on the carte as simply “Squid”, with the detailed description in smaller type beneath it. All items followed this format, which allowed me to quickly flick an eye down the list and identify instantly the main ingredient of any given dish. I was then able to decide if I was in the mood for say chicken or asparagus or scallops without having to first wade through a lot of complex menu language which, although designed to make the food sound appetising, often simply confuses matters. An outstanding amuse of cream of foie gras, cider jelly and spiced bread emulsion was offered along with excellent onion bread from a choice of 4 types. Too often these additional courses can act as an irritant, included by chefs in a doomed attempt to play the Michelin game and second-guess the criteria that might win them a star. In the wrong hands, they can disrupt the natural flow and balance of a meal and dull the appetite, making the diner full before he has had a chance to eat the food he actually ordered. Not so at Putney Bridge. A thin layer of jelly and a blob of the emulsion topped the light, chilled cream, studded with marinated sultanas. The effect was delicate, with subtle flavours of the liver, cider and spiced bread worked into the mousse-like texture. Delightful to eat and easy on the stomach, it was a nice lead in to the more robust intent of the squid. Two tubes of the mollusc had been stuffed with the wine-enriched meat, browned off and served with a large quenelle of the salt cod and potato. The cromesquis was a variation on the Marc Meneau classic, with a parsley coulis set with gelatine then breadcrumbed and deep-fried. This required careful knife work in order to avoid a hot verdant fountain of the now liquid herb shooting up from the plate and staining my jacket. This danger successfully navigated, I assembled a forkful with each of the seemingly disparate elements to see if they could form an unlikely alliance on the tongue. Somehow it all worked, with the parsley uniting the fairly neutral squid casing with the intense but tender beef and the rich salty mash. A real cracker of a dish in fact, encompassing braised, sautéed, poached and deep-fried ingredients to great effect, and all for a bargain £9.50. A main of “Lamb” was a herb coated rack, slow cooked shoulder “boulangere”, young (there’s that word again) vegetables and roasting juice. As if to acknowledge that the pink meat of the spring lamb might lack a little in the flavour department, a small heap of sea salt and white pepper had been piled onto the edge of the plate. It was a lovely hunk of protein never the less, with the potato cake adding the necessary heft and unctuousness that the rack couldn’t manage alone. A nicely judged array of vegetables included some lightly soused fennel, roasted cherry tomato, whole baby carrot and courgette. The dish was finished with “not enough gravy” (my quotes) which seems to have become a feature of modern cooking. I would be lying however if I said the food was in anyway dry, it’s just that I like a lot of sauce. I know a flooded plate is terribly old fashioned, but maybe restaurants could get in the habit of offering a little pot of extra jus on the side. I should add, that given the level of service I received at Putney Bridge, I don’t doubt for a second that one would have been produced should I have requested it, but I realised too late that the last couple of mouthfuls would have been improved with a touch more liquid. A pre-dessert was described as “veloute of coffee with burnt milk ice cream”. What that actually represents in terms of cooking technique I’m not entirely sure, but it certainly shared the mousse like qualities of it savoury cousin served at the start of the meal and was another winning dish. Dessert proper took the form of warm vanilla waffles, banana and pecan nut jam, Chantilly and warm chocolate sauce. Three waffles, tucked up in a napkin on a rectangular plate came with quenelles of the jam and cream and a pot of the sauce on a separate platter. It was then up to me to put it all together, allowing me to happily slosh far too much of the delicious molten chocolate about the place and act like a hungry five year old at breakfast. Very good coffee was accompanied by yet more food, this time an impressive selection of petit four. Although these went left untouched on the day, they were not wasted as they were presented to me in a very smart black box to take away. Service, headed by William Smith, was pitched perfectly: runners with trays, ceremonial conveying of plates to the table, appropriately detailed explanations of the food, help with the wine list, a “bon appetite” here, a “how are you enjoying your dinner” there. All the formalities present and correct, but only so as to allow the diner complete confidence in the restaurant, not to intimidate or to impress. I would like to be able to say something intelligent about the wine list, but can only comment that it starts at a very pleasing £15.00 for a bottle of Touraine, goes up quite a bit higher than that and includes many interesting bottles, a white Chateau Musar being just one example. I drank most of a bottle £26.00 Chardonnay which stood up well to the food. As it was chosen for me by the sommelier and I failed to take any notes, I can tell you no more about it other than it went down a treat. On the basis of one meal, Putney Bridge appears to me to be an outstanding operation in every regard. With high ratings in many of the guides, a packed bar and busy dining room it would be erroneous to suggest that it needs to be somehow re-discovered. But it if for any reason it has dropped off your culinary radar, a reconnaissance mission deep into the heart of SW15 could well be overdue.

Caterer reckons £29.50 a la carte. That won't last long. It'll be nearer £40.00 within 6 weeks I would guess. Lunch is £24.50.

He's at Elystan Street in Chelsea, don't know the number I'm afraid. He's meant to have a website at www.tomaikens.co.uk but nothing comes up when I try it.

I'm excited about this restaurant, it should be a shot in the arm to a scene which seems to be dominated by the news of the ever expanding empire of Ramsay and Wareing. Wonderful cooks the pair of them, but it's nice to see an independent, and apparently ambitious enterprise being launched.

I am so glad my wife doesn't read this stuff.

Martin Wishart?

Thats nothing, you should have seen me when I spotted Helena Hell. Frothing at the mouth was the least of it.

Nice piece in the Times on this story.

But of course.

How fascinating...

I think 'polite' might be a better description. I just couldn't bring myself to tell the weird beardy man begging the introductions to chefs, to go away. It's a character failing. Jay Rayner is a polite man, except, it would appear, when he has the internet to hide behind.